₦airaland Forum

Long live the King. That is the greatest kingdom in Nigeria

Who will now investigate you when you steal Dino... SMH

Dino Melaye, the senator representing Kogi west at the national assembly, says those who have followed his records know he is a private investigator and a whistle-blower.

Melaye said this on Thursday at an investigative hearing into his allegation that MTN, a telecommunications firm, colluded with Okechukwu Enelamah, minister of industry, trade and Investment, to illegally move $13.92billion out of he country, between 2006 and 2016.

“I brought this up as a whistle-blower; I have nothing personal against MTN. Those who know my records know I have always been a private investigator,” Melaye said.

“I moved a motion on the Airport road and kubwa road (Abuja) and there was a downward review of that contract by N100 billion. It is for the future where my son will ask me: what did you do when Nigeria was going bad?

“If you say the truth, you will die. If you don’t, you will die. Why not say the truth? I am satisfied with the processes the senate is taking. What I have presented is not fallacious, I have documents.

“There are lot of multi-national companies repatriating funds half our foreign reserve.”

On September 27, Melaye had expressed “serious concerns” that since inception, MTN had sought the collaboration of influential and unpatriotic Nigerians to assist them in looting the country’s external reserves.

“The minister of industry, trade and investment, Dr Okechukwu Enelamah, owner of CELTELCOM Investment Limited with address at No 608, St James, Denis Street Port-Lewis Mauritius purportedly claimed to invest in MTN on February 7, 2008, got certificate of capital importation and filled form A on the same date, closed his investment in Nigeria after receiving dollar payment‎ for repatriation to New York same day,” he said, before urging the senate to mandate its committee on banking, insurance and other financial institutions to “carry out holistic investigation into the matter”.

MTN denied the allegation, describing it as “completely unfounded and without any merit”.


https://www.thecable.ng/melaye-those-who-know-me-know-that-im-a-private-investigator-and-whistle-blower?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThecableTopStories+%28TheCable+%C2%BB+Top+Stories%29

Upon all the media trial. This one is just going about doing his business

His oga doesn't have a wassce certificate. So, its not unexpected

They make the laws and break them... Fashola signed that bill into law sometime ago. NO public smoking, but LAI Mohammed's son who is a member of the state house of assembly smokes in public. What a country

Brilliant chap. Beautiful Nigerian

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company by market value, has quit Nigeria’s downstream oil sector, divesting its 60 percent stake in Mobil Oil Nigeria (MON).

In a statement circulated on Thursday, the company, which has a market value of $460 billion – more than Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) – said it made business sense to quit the downstream oil sector at this time.

“Following these assessments, we sometimes find that it makes greater business sense to divest when the businesses are estimated to have higher value to others,” ExxonMobil said.

The company went on to say “this decision is in no way a reflection of our view on the local business climate, financial results or the workforce”.

Nipco Plc., an indigenous downstream oil and gas company, confirmed the acquisition of ExxonMobil’s 60 percent stake in Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc (MON).

Venkataraman Venkatapathy, managing director, Nipco Plc., said: “With the signing, we will start the transition period and initiate the process of obtaining regulatory approvals from the requisite federal agencies – SEC and NSE.

“This will also enable Nipco Plc. to effectively manage a smooth and successful completion of the transaction.

“It is part of our strategic move to support Nipco’s continuous growth and expansion of its Nigerian retail footprint. We are confident of adding tremendous value to MON and likewise MON will add a huge value to Nipco.”

With a revenue stream of $246,204 billion, ExxonMobil, founded by John D. Rockefeller, one of the world’s richest men of all time, is the second biggest company in the world – just after Walmart and before Apple on Fortune 500 list.


https://www.thecable.ng/exxonmobil-worlds-largest-oil-company-quits-nigerias-downstream-sector?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThecableTopStories+%28TheCable+%C2%BB+Top+Stories%29

Hmmmn. God will save us ooo

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company by market value, has quit Nigeria’s downstream oil sector, divesting its 60 percent stake in Mobil Oil Nigeria (MON).

In a statement circulated on Thursday, the company, which has a market value of $460 billion – more than Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) – said it made business sense to quit the downstream oil sector at this time.

“Following these assessments, we sometimes find that it makes greater business sense to divest when the businesses are estimated to have higher value to others,” ExxonMobil said.

The company went on to say “this decision is in no way a reflection of our view on the local business climate, financial results or the workforce”.

Nipco Plc., an indigenous downstream oil and gas company, confirmed the acquisition of ExxonMobil’s 60 percent stake in Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc (MON).

Venkataraman Venkatapathy, managing director, Nipco Plc., said: “With the signing, we will start the transition period and initiate the process of obtaining regulatory approvals from the requisite federal agencies – SEC and NSE.

“This will also enable Nipco Plc. to effectively manage a smooth and successful completion of the transaction.

“It is part of our strategic move to support Nipco’s continuous growth and expansion of its Nigerian retail footprint. We are confident of adding tremendous value to MON and likewise MON will add a huge value to Nipco.”

With a revenue stream of $246,204 billion, ExxonMobil, founded by John D. Rockefeller, one of the world’s richest men of all time, is the second biggest company in the world – just after Walmart and before Apple on Fortune 500 list.


https://www.thecable.ng/exxonmobil-worlds-largest-oil-company-quits-nigerias-downstream-sector?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThecableTopStories+%28TheCable+%C2%BB+Top+Stories%29

For the 30 years that Buhari was jobless, he never stood in front of a gathering like this. He didn't get an honorary degree or observed any election. What was he doing exactly? Oh! Rearing zombies

OP you na sabi put space for post abi.

FFK is really in for it. He should better decamp to APC ASAP so that all his sins can be forgiven

Another bunch of clueless personalities

Just like the ministers, I am sure they will all be useless. Just collecting jumbo pay

kk

Good

Great

LAGOS, Nigeria — I was 7 years old the first time I recognized political fear. My parents and their friends were talking about the government, in our living room, in our relatively big house, set on relatively wide grounds at a southeastern Nigerian university, with doors shut and no strangers present. Yet they spoke in whispers.

So ingrained was their apprehension that they whispered even when they did not need to. It was 1984 and Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari was the military head of state.
Governmental controls had mangled the economy.

Many imported goods were banned, scarcity was rife, black markets thrived, businesses were failing and soldiers stalked markets to enforce government-determined prices.

My mother came home with precious cartons of subsidized milk and soap, which were sold in rationed quantities. Soldiers flogged people on the streets for “indiscipline” — such as littering or not standing in queues at the bus stop.

On television, the head of state, stick-straight and authoritative, seemed remote, impassive on his throne amid the fear and uncertainty.
And yet when, 30 years later, in 2015, Mr. Buhari was elected as a democratic president, I welcomed it. Because for the first time, Nigerians had voted out an incumbent in an election that was largely free and fair.

Because Mr. Buhari had sold himself as a near-ascetic reformer, as a man so personally aboveboard that he would wipe out Nigeria’s decades-long corruption. He represented a form of hope.

Nigeria is difficult to govern. It is Africa’s most populous country, with regional complexities, a scarred history and a patronage-based political culture. Still, Mr. Buhari ascended to the presidency with a rare advantage — not only did he have the good will of a majority of Nigerians, he elicited a peculiar mix of fear and respect.

[img][/img]

For the first weeks of his presidency, it was said that civil servants who were often absent from work suddenly appeared every day, on time, and that police officers and customs officials stopped demanding bribes. He had an opportunity to make real reforms early on, to boldly reshape Nigeria’s path. He wasted it.

Perhaps the first clue was the unusually long time it took him to appoint his ministers. After an ostensible search for the very best, he presented many recycled figures with whom Nigerians were disenchanted.

But the real test of his presidency came with the continued fall in oil prices, which had begun the year before his inauguration.

Nigeria’s economy is unwholesomely dependent on oil, and while the plunge in prices was bound to be catastrophic, Mr. Buhari’s actions made it even more so.
He adopted a policy of “defending” the naira, Nigeria’s currency.

The official exchange rate was kept artificially low. On the black market, the exchange rate ballooned.

Prices for everything rose: rice, bread, cooking oil. Fruit sellers and car sellers blamed “the price of dollars.” Complaints of hardship cut across class. Some businesses fired employees; others folded.

The government decided who would have access to the central bank’s now-reduced foreign currency reserves, and drew up an arbitrary list of worthy and unworthy goods — importers of toothpicks cannot, for example, but importers of oil can. Predictably, this policy spawned corruption:

The exclusive few who were able to buy dollars at official rates could sell them on the black market and earn large, riskless profits — transactions that contribute nothing to the economy.

Mr. Buhari has spoken of his “good reasons” for ignoring the many economists who warned about the danger of his policies. He believes, rightly, that Nigeria needs to produce more of what it consumes, and he wants to spur local production.

But local production cannot be willed into existence if the supporting infrastructure is absent, and banning goods has historically led not to local production but to a thriving shadow market.

His intentions, good as they well might be, are rooted in an outdated economic model and an infantile view of Nigerians.

For him, it seems, patriotism is not a voluntary and flexible thing, with room for dissent, but a martial enterprise: to obey without questioning. Nationalism is not negotiated, but enforced.

The president seems comfortable with conditions that make an economy uncomfortable — uncertainty and disillusion. But the economy is not the only reason for Nigerians’ declining hope.

A few months ago, a young woman, Chidera, came to work as a nanny in my Lagos home. A week into her job, I found her in tears in her room. She needed to go back to her ancestral home in the southeast, she said, because Fulani herdsmen had just murdered her grandfather on his farm.

She showed me a gruesome cellphone photo of his corpse, desecrated by bullets, an old man crumpled on the farm he owned.

Chidera’s grandfather is only one of the hundreds of people who have been murdered by Fulani herdsmen — cattle herders from northern Nigeria who, until recently, were benign figures in the southern imagination, walking across the country with their grazing cattle.

Since Mr. Buhari came to power, villages in the middle-belt and southern regions have been raided, the inhabitants killed, their farmlands sacked. Those attacked believe the Fulani herdsmen want to forcibly take over their lands for cattle grazing.

It would be unfair to blame Mr. Buhari for these killings, which are in part a result of complex interactions between climate change and land use. But leadership is as much about perception as it is about action, and Mr. Buhari has appeared disengaged.

It took him months, and much criticism from civil society, to finally issue a statement “condemning” the killings. His aloofness feels, at worst, like a tacit enabling of murder and, at best, an absence of sensitive leadership.

Most important, his behavior suggests he is tone-deaf to the widely held belief among southern Nigerians that he promotes a northern Sunni Muslim agenda.

He was no less opaque when the Nigerian Army murdered hundreds of members of a Shiite Muslim group in December, burying them in hastily dug graves.

Or when soldiers killed members of the small secessionist pro-Biafran movement who were protesting the arrest of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, a little-known figure whose continued incarceration has elevated him to a minor martyr.

Nigerians who expected a fair and sweeping cleanup of corruption have been disappointed. Arrests have tended to be selective, targeting mostly those opposed to Mr. Buhari’s government. The anti-corruption agencies are perceived not only as partisan but as brazenly flouting the rule of law:

The Department of State Security recently barged into the homes of various judges at midnight, harassing and threatening them and arresting a number of them, because the judges’ lifestyles “suggested” that they were corrupt.

There is an ad hoc air to the government that does not inspire that vital ingredient for a stable economy: confidence.

There is, at all levels of government, a relentless blaming of previous administrations and a refusal to acknowledge mistakes.

And there are eerie signs of the past’s repeating itself — Mr. Buhari’s tone and demeanor are reminiscent of 1984, and his military-era War Against Indiscipline program is being reintroduced.

There are no easy answers to Nigeria’s malaise, but the government’s intervention could be more salutary — by prioritizing infrastructure, creating a business-friendly environment and communicating to a populace mired in disappointment.
In a country enamored of dark humor, a common greeting among the middle class now is “Happy recession!”


The Article By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie First Appeared on New York

Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/opinion/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-nigerias-failed-promises.html?_r=2



http://wdn.com.ng/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-nigerias-failed-promises/

Stone age people

For the first time since the inception of the eighth national assembly, the upper chamber decided its position on a matter on Tuesday by electronic voting.

Tuesday also marked the first time since the final year of seventh assembly that electronic voting was used at the plenary

The plenary session had started with the use voice voting to adopt the votes and proceedings of the previous legislative day, but it later switched to electronic voting, which was used in the confirmation of supreme court justices.

Mohammed Ndume, senate leader, said the All Progressives Congress (APC) government had brought change by using the card reader in 2015 general election, and it had now extended it to the senate via electronic voting.

Following the announcement by the senate leader, Ike Ekweremadu, deputy senate president, told his colleagues that they could only vote from their assigned seats by slotting in their cards in a provision made for it.

It appeared that most of the senators did not understand the procedure, as Ekweremadu repeatedly explained to his colleagues that they first had to slot in their cards to register before they could vote.

While voting on the confirmation of Justice Ejembi Eko, 39 senators registered but 38 voted yes to the confirmation.

For the confirmation of Justice Amina Augie, 40 senators registered but only 39 senators voted yes to the confirmation.

In previous assemblies, the electronic voting had been adopted but it was abandoned along the line. However, the senate adjourned plenary by resorting to its tradition of voice votes.

October 2014 was the last time the senate employed electronic voting in obtaining the opinion of lawmakers on an issue.


https://www.thecable.ng/extra-for-the-first-time-in-2-years-senate-uses-electronic-voting?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThecableTopStories+%28TheCable+%C2%BB+Top+Stories%29

ebuclassic18:
you too my broda

even you

This government will end up losing all cases in Court

Adeniyi Ademola, justice of the federal high court, whom the Department of State Services (DSS) accused of corruption, has withdrawn from the trial of Sambo Dasuki, former national security adviser (NSA).

Ademola announced his decision to withdraw from the trial before the court on Tuesday.

He cited allegations of corruption levelled against him by the DSS, which is the prosecution in the case, as the reason for his action.

The DSS raided Ademola’s house, and arrested him on October 7.

The secret police claimed it found huge sums of money — foreign currencies — in his possession.

In response to the allegations, the judge wrote to the chief justice of Nigeria, claiming he was being harassed and intimidated by the DSS for granting bail to Dasuki and Nnamdi Kanu, director of Radio Biafra.

https://www.thecable.ng/breaking-ademola-judge-arrested-dss-withdraws-dasukis-trial?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThecableTopStories+%28TheCable+%C2%BB+Top+Stories%29

They are all corrupt. Jonathan, Buhari, Everybody in the last government and the current government. Even an average Nigerian Youth is corrupt. Annoyingly corrupt nation

The BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) group has expressed shock at the use of its brand name at a fundraising by Hadiza Buhari-Bello, President Muhammadu Buhari’s daughter.

At the event, which was held on Monday, the Peace Corps of Nigeria donated N3.5m to Africa Support and Empowerment Initiative, a non-governmental organisation owned by Buhari-Bello as part of an endowment fund for the Chibok girls.

“Bringbackourgirls” was inscribed boldly on the backdrop of the event.

But the advocacy group led by Oby Ezekwesili has disassociated itself from the event, promising to issue a response through its lawyer, Femi Falana.

In a statement signed by Ezekwesili and Aisha Yesufu, the group said the organisers of the event were trying to smear its hard-earned name.

The BBOG group emphasised that it was a self-funded movement, and not a money-making NGO.
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“Following repeated enquiries from the media, we stumbled upon information of an event tagged ‘Official Inauguration and Signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the Chibok Girls Endowment Project’ organised by the ‘Peace Corps of Nigeria’ and ‘Africa Support and Empowerment Initiative,’ with Hadiza Buhari-Bello,” the statement read.

“We are shocked, perplexed and completely dumbfounded to see the bold inscription of our hard-earned name, #BringBackOurGirls, on the event’s backdrop. We state categorically that we are not party to the said event and have absolutely no information of its origin. We urge the general public to disregard attempts at linking our movement to this highly suspicious event.

“After 902 days of painstaking advocacy, it is disheartening and unfortunate to suddenly see attempts, by external actors, to use it for selfish purposes. We have carefully built our reputation as a well-organised and disciplined global movement that is completely self-funded.

“The deliberate decision, to remain funded by sacrificial contributions of members for our very negligible needs, is the reason we are solely a Citizens’ Movement, and not an NGO. It will be highly injurious to allow it be dragged in the mud at this point. We therefore demand an immediate retraction and unreserved apology from the organisers.

“Together with our lawyers, Femi Falana & Co., we are considering a response to this attempt to smear our movement. We call on the general public and law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for unscrupulous persons who may already be/are planning similar nefarious acts to deceive the local and international community.”‎

Speaking with TheCable, Onwuka Don Uche, national secretary of the NGO, said he tried to reach members of the BBOG group but failed at every turn.

“I tried to contact members of the group, but I couldn’t reach any of them,” he said.

“I dropped a message for Oby Ezekwesili on Twitter, but there was no response. We will reach out to group. It is purely a fund for the Chibok girls, and we want to make BBOG a signatory to the account.”

https://www.thecable.ng/bbog-group-knocks-buharis-daughter-for-raising-n3-5m-with-its-brand-name?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThecableTopStories+%28TheCable+%C2%BB+Top+Stories%29

Clique of robbers

You said as part of the convention, judges have what we can call relative immunity. Does it mean that as it is now, the accused judges cannot be tried in court unless they are removed from office?

For me, it will be strange to have a judicial officer whose commission has not been abrogated or terminated to be arraigned or be put in the dock. It doesn’t make sense. He’s a judicial officer, and after he has been arraigned, he takes his plea and goes back to serve as a judge. No, it won’t happen. With that, you are desecrating the temple of justice. So the best thing is to get him suspended, indicted or removed so that you treat them as ordinary persons. The ritual is there. A judge that is corrupt is worse than an armed robber, because he’s compromising the judicial process. He’s tilting the scales of justice in favour of a litigant who has paid him. You know the figurine of Themis; the goddess of justice, which is at the courts; blindfolded lady, sword on one hand and scales on the other. If you compromise the judge, it will remove the blindfold to see the litigants and tilt the scales in favour of one who has paid or paid more. At the end, justice is no longer fair to all concerned. So, it’s a very serious indictment; people who are empowered to even sentence people to death. That’s the highest power you can give. You now compromise their status and you want to justify it, it’s untoward. The reputation of these judges has been irreparably damaged. There is no way they can repair that damage. They have been thrown under a moving bus and they can’t survive it because presumption of innocence has not been applied to them; people are already condemning them. There are all sort of things brought up in this scenario. It makes me sad as a law teacher of some 44 years, having trained more than 65 Senior Advocates and judges of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court. How do I face my students to be telling them about the rule of law and separation of powers, presumption of innocence and all those points that we make in class. The students would just reply with a loud yawn, and like Fela used to say ‘Don’t teach me nonsense’.

Do you think the way the judges are appointed also contribute to this rot in the judiciary?

With the way and manner we started appointing judges, it means we don’t do proper reality and diligence checks. Many of them are from the magistracy. Corruption is rife at the magistrate level and you promote them from the magistracy to the court of superior record, and from there, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Old habits die hard. Those who have been corrupt as magistrates cannot change overnight. It won’t happen. A leopard can’t change its spots. So, certain people have been infused with corruption and they have been bitten by the corruption bug, and once you have been contaminated by corrupt practices, it’s like in the university too, when you are guilty of what lawyers call infamous conduct, say with students, by the time you become a Professor or Dean or VC, you would continue with the practice because you have never been caught. Your day will come when you will be caught in flagrante delicto (caught red-handed) and then the university would part ways with you. That is the sanction because every profession has its code of ethics. Judges are first and foremost lawyers. They go to the law school and they are taught rules of professional conduct, ethics, and if you violate them or commit infamous conduct in law, there are sanctions. For lawyers, they could be disbarred or suspended. For judges, they could be removed, and once you are removed as a judge, you can no longer appear before a court having donned the revered ropes of a judicial officer, because you brought odium and disgrace on the legal process. Apart from that, the constitution says you can no longer act as a barrister or solicitor. You’ve broken the judicial oath of office and it’s like you are now put in limbo, you are completely disgraced, you are a contaminated person; a damaged good and no longer fit and proper as lawyers would say, to preside over other people’s affair. So it’s a very serious indictment. In all kinds of countries that I know of, judges can be removed; they are not higher than the rest of us. They can be tried and imprisoned. But you give them all the benefits of protection which the law affords. That’s what we are saying.

It appears people have lost faith in the NJC because what it does most of the time is to recommend indicted judges for retirement, and in very few instances, prosecution. How do you assess NJC in discharging its responsibilities?

I’m not aware of prosecuting or jailing judges but the NJC has removed quite a number of judges. The NJC is doing the best it can in the circumstance. It depends very much on the CJN who chairs the NJC. Some people want reform to separate the CJN from the NJC, but my humble submission is that we can’t be reforming or amending the constitution in bits and pieces. The whole constitution that we are operating is Decree 24 of 1999. It’s a military decree masquerading as a constitution. We need a new constitution which will take into account the realities of the age. And the draft constitution for a new constituent assembly should be thrown open to the people by way of a referendum. If they now accept the draft, then, the new constitution takes effect and it is legitimate because it has met the imprimatur of the people. What we are doing is we are using a discredited and illegitimate constitution to govern ourselves. It’s about time we did away with the Abdusalam Abubakar-introduced constitution and then the NJC, the powers, composition, etc,. will be part of the amendment. But, discussing the NJC is an isolation of the composition. The military for their own best reason foisted the constitution on Nigerians.

You were a delegate to the 2014 confab, was this part of the issues discussed?

When we were at the confab, we suggested how to go about it but this government says it will have nothing to do with what the constituent assembly recommended. I was aghast when I heard that. If you look at the array of the personalities that went to that confab, there is no election that would bring up such a galaxy of stars; former presidents of Senate, former vice president, vice chancellors, former ministers and many others were there. 497 Nigerians were there for about three months, labouring over Nigeria and its problems, and at the end of the day came up with a draft constitution. More than 600 recommendations came out of the confab, but Buhari for reasons best known to him, said he wasn’t going to have anything to do with it, and the secretary to the government said it was a job for the boys. The people the SGF was calling boys included 92-year-old Mamman Nasir, a former President of the Court of Appeal. My advice is that Nigeria should go back to review the work of the confab. Another prominent member of the confab was Ken Nnamani, a former president of the senate. Don’t forget that we once had a reform by a panel chaired by a former CJN, Muhammed Uwais; we seem to be going round in circles.

Some people would also tie it to the fact that the budget of the judiciary is the least among the three tiers of government. Could the corruption in the judiciary be a product of inadequate funding?

I’m not sure the judiciary is challenged by funds, so we can’t even talk of judges trying to help themselves because of that. Judges still have official cars and quarters. They still have the perks of office which are supposed to insulate them from the generality of society. At a time in this country, we had people like JIC Tailor (John Taylor). He was Chief Justice of Lagos. We can’t talk of corruption when talking about people like that. Same thing applies to people like Justice Oyemade of the old Western Nigeria, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, Justice Yinka Ayoola, Justice Obaseki, Justice Irikefe, a dandy man with his bow tie, not to talk of Justice Kayode Eso. We have had great judges. Judges are noble persons and they should live a life of nobility. If you are avaricious, then, the judicial calling is not yours. We want people who are a little bit ascetic, who are moderate in their expectations and in their financial dispensations and they must be of temperate values. They are not exhibitionists, but people who shun flamboyance. The late Ojetunji Aboyade said something that I didn’t forget. He said there are three possible values that one can hanker after in Nigeria; power, influence and respect. He said if you want power, you go into politics and dominate other people, if you want influence, you go into business; make money and you acquire influence. If you want respect, you go into academics and make a name. He said the tragedy of our situation is that Nigerians want the three together at once. So, if you are a judge, it is a highly dignified position. They already have a lofty position, and that is a position which money should not buy.

If the NJC had done its job well from time, perhaps the rot in the judiciary would not have reached this height. Do you feel so?

The greatest commandment is ‘thou shall not be caught.’ It is only those who are caught or found out that go before the NJC. It means there could still be very many corrupt judges that we know nothing about. So, if there are no whistleblowers that will inform the NJC about the corrupt tendencies of certain judges, the presumption will be in their favour that they are not corrupt. So, the onus is on the generality of Nigerians to blow the whistle against those they know have soiled their hands. If no reports are made, how can the NJC act? I don’t want us to be too hard on the NJC. They are doing their best in the circumstance. There are still so many upright judges and I don’t want us to taint every judge with corruption. Some of them are doing a good job but we should never condone corruption in any ramification.

What is the implication of this development on Nigeria’s image in the international community?

The judgement the judiciary gives would impact on the image of Nigeria. You remember the judgement of (Justice) Awokulehin in the James Ibori’s case. He gave Ibori a clean bill of health, only for Ibori to be tried and convicted in an English court. That is an indictment on the sense of justice in some of our courts. Some of our judges have not been upright, but as I said, you won’t hang Nigeria by the malfeasance of a few of its judicial officers. Some of our judges are as best as you can get anywhere, they are well educated and really, we should be a little bit temperate in talking about our judges. Internationally, Nigerian judges are still respected at commonwealth law conferences and world judicial conferences. We are highly regarded. The only thing that you might find a little bit uncomfortable is the decisions ECOWAS Court, which are now tending to be an indictment on the Nigerian state, not the judiciary. You grant bail to an accused person, but the state does not implement that bail and you don’t have competent lawyers that ought to have gone to argue the case on the basis of exhaustion of local remedies. An international tribunal does not have the power to adjudicate on a matter that has been truncated, except there is no remedy to exhaust. The accused didn’t go to the Supreme Court, which is the highest court in Nigeria, they just flew from the High Court to ECOWAS. The lawyer for the country ought to have argued the doctrine of exhaustion of local remedies, but maybe because they never studied International Law at undergraduate level. So, they don’t even know. Ignorance could be very expensive.[/size][size=8pt]


http://punchng.com/presidencys-justification-dss-raid-judges-homes-disappointing-oyebode/

Please read as a student and with total objectivity

Mudiaga Affe

A renowned academic and professor of International Law and Jurisprudence, Akin Oyebode, who is also the Chairman, Office of International Relations, Partnerships and Prospects, University of Lagos, in this interview with TUNDE AJAJA shares his thoughts on the recent happenings in the judiciary.

There have been divided opinions on the rightness or otherwise of how the Department of State Services invaded the houses of some judges over allegations of corruption and arrested some of them, including judges of the Supreme Court, few days ago. How would you describe that incident?

What happened in the past week has been so devastating. The status of judges within a democratic system is sacrosanct because they are given the mandate to preside over dispensation of justice. If you look at the judicial oath when you appoint somebody to the bench, he swears to do justice to all manners of person without fears, affection or ill-will. They even have the power to sentence persons to death. They are like representatives of God on earth. If you look at the architecture of the courtroom, the judge’s position is higher than that of every other person in the court. They are select persons. But when they fall short of expectations of their high office, they are not spared. They drink the hemlock or they are burnt at the stake. It’s as simple as that. Corruption is pervasive in Nigeria and it affects all facets of human endeavour. So, in the case of judges, if they are found to have committed acts of malfeasance or acts unbecoming of their high office, we burn them at the stakes. I’m too ambivalent in terms of what happened. On the one hand, I’m against corruption in the judiciary and on the other hand, I’m against arbitrariness and self help. Lord Denning, in a famous case; the case of Goriet vs. Union of Postal Workers Union, said, “Be you ever so high, yet the law is above you.” So, judges are not above the law, but the state should take benefit of all the procedural safeguards, like presumption of innocence and fair hearing, etc. They should not be condemned unheard, because we have not heard from any of those judges, and people already see them as if they are all guilty. When I read the story about my former student, who was Chief Judge of Enugu State and one-time lecturer in the University of Ibadan, and that he had been picked up because somebody promised him N10m at his book launch, I said how can Innocent (Umezulike) allow himself to be set up like this. Or you talk of people like Justice Adeniyi Ademola, whose grandfather was once a Chief Justice of Nigeria and his father was a President of Court of Appeal. He was a rising star at the Federal High Court in Abuja and I used him as an example in class, and that one day he could be the Chief Justice of Nigeria and people said it’s in his DNA. But now, see what has happened. If gold rusts, what should iron do? That is my position.



Some people have also faulted the DSS for being the agency that carried out that operation, even when the Act establishing the DSS says the agency can also carry out any other function assigned to it by the President or the National Assembly. Do you also think it was wrong?

Your point is well taken but what has happened here is that the Department of State Services is not an organ to investigate corruption, unlike the ICPC, EFCC, or Police. The DSS’s area of competence is security; to maintain stability and ensure that no conspiracy succeeds in overthrowing the government. It is a secret police. Being corrupt is not tantamount to trying to overthrow the government of the day. By the time they now usurp the role and functions of the police, ICPC and EFCC, you know that something has gone wrong and that is why I would not be surprised if at the end of the day we discover that what happened last week was the handiwork of what you can call fifth columnists, who want to embarrass the government. If they find faults with some of those judicial officers, ordinarily you should pass the information to the National Judicial Council, which would, after investigations, separate those corrupt judges from the judiciary, because one rotten apple spoils the entire pack. After the judges are separated from the judiciary, then the police can commence prosecution against them. That’s the due process of the law. But the alibi put out by the DSS, for me, is unconvincing. It’s symptomatic of the expression that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You might have laudable, noble and patriotic intentions, but that does not give you a licence to perform acts that lawyers call self help, arbitrariness and taking the law into your hands. It’s presumptuous and it is in fact inimical and counter-productive to the sanctity of the judicial process. The Roman thinker, Juvenal, once asked, ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes’, meaning “Who will guard the guards themselves? If you say that DSS is the guard, who will guard them? It’s the law. What the DSS did was tantamount to an act to bring the roof down on all of us. It’s like you first pick up somebody and then you look for reasons afterwards, not the other way round, by which they do their investigation and when they have enough evidence, they should proceed to arraign. I’m sure they quickly released these judges because of the outcry of majority of Nigerians that it is unacceptable. It’s okay in Idi Amin’s Uganda but not in Nigeria in 2016.

The timing of the raid also raised some concern. Would it have made any difference if it was done during daytime rather than in the night?

Overzealousness among the rank of DSS has destroyed the otherwise laudable objective. That’s why I said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Last year, we had a similar situation in Ghana. About 32 judges were removed, but without the histrionics or the brouhaha and the razzmatazz that the DSS put up. Ghana did it and heavens didn’t fall; it was very clinical. It was a surgical operation to excise the judges from the body politic of the judiciary. How come that in Nigeria we always get things wrong? We always put our foot in our mouth. The DSS spoilt an otherwise good case by their timing and their method of operation. More significantly, arresting corrupt persons is not, properly speaking, part of the mandate of the DSS. So, it’s reprehensible, it’s to be deprecated and the DSS should enter a mea culpa and promise not to sin anymore, because what they did is unacceptable. In fact, it’s befuddling and gregarious, which no decent country should accept. I’m not sure that the President of Nigeria would authorise such illegal action against highly placed judges.

But the presidency has come out to defend the action of the DSS. Isn’t that an indication that the presidency is involved?

I read the justification by the presidency. It’s unacceptable and it is an after-thought. When you look at that speech, the spin doctors should go back to school. We are not dummies. Do they take us to be kids? I told you I have been teaching Law for almost 44 years. For such a poor statement coming from the presidency shows the very poor quality of minds in the presidency. It means there is something wrong with the presidency and they are not properly guided or properly advised. There are six lawyers in the cabinet, and among them are Senior Advocates of Nigeria. In fact, the man I pity most is the Vice President, who is not only a Law Professor, but also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. This government by approving or justifying what was done has shot itself in the foot. Silence would have been better than to make such a statement. Quite sincerely, I’m not impressed, I’m not amused. In fact, I’m disappointed by what the presidency is trying to justify. An adage says we should jointly condemn a thief and not accuse the owner of the stolen item for putting his item in a wrong place. What is bad is bad. It is bad and we should collectively deprecate such conduct. I don’t understand what is going on. You are fighting a war against corruption, that’s fantastic. You have difficulties? Yes there is the possibility, but make sure you carry the generality of the people along so that people would not say that you are incompetent or that you are selective and that your arguments are self-serving. Something snapped in the presidency and the earlier they enter a mea culpa to apologise to the rest of us that there will never be a recurrence, only then will I be prepared to absolve them of this mishap. It’s a mishap. There is what you call international best practice. It doesn’t appear as if the powers that be have ever heard of that phrase. Nigeria strives to be a respectable member of the international community but what happened is a disservice to Nigeria. It will make us a laughing stock among nations. In the debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump said he was going to jail her if he becomes the President, and one of the commentators said ‘that happens in Africa, not in America. It’s in Africa where dictators jail their opponents because they don’t follow due process.’ I was angry that the commentator could use Africa as an example of where people just take laws into their hands and that has caused Donald Trump a lot of votes, if you look at the assessment of the public. In Nigeria, we take so many things for granted. Even the constitution we are operating which is the product of Decree 24, is it legitimate? But it is the constitution we are operating and under that constitution, a special place was reserved for the judiciary, so I don’t see how a government can properly assail that constitution and want the respect and even understanding of the generality of Nigerians.

Years ago, we didn’t hear this uproar about corruption in the judiciary, but now everybody seems to be speaking with one voice that the judiciary is corrupt. Where did we get it wrong?

It is with the caliber of persons that we appoint to high judicial offices, even though corruption in the judiciary is not new. We had the Kayode Eso-panel in the 1990s, which found about 20 judges corrupt and recommended that they should be separated from the judiciary. I don’t want to sound prophetic but I’ve been talking about corruption of the judiciary for a long time. There was a lecture I gave in 1992 to the NBA conference in Port Harcourt before they started throwing chairs at one another. The title of my lecture was ‘Is the judiciary still the last hope of the common man?’ That was in 1992. Then, last year December, I delivered another keynote address before the Lagos branch of the NBA on human rights and corruption. Less than a month ago, I delivered a lecture titled, ‘The Integrity of Law’, where I said it seems the noxious fumes of corruption are now being smelt even within the temple of justice. Before my lecture, the Chief Justice of Nigeria had warned the paralegals in court not to do anything untoward. I mentioned the fact that the NJC is fighting a rearguard battle to cleanse the bar and clear the Augean stables. I was saying that maybe we should get familiar with the approach in France, and that the approach in England which we have been following can be so unhelpful, and in fact dysfunctional if not indeed inimical to the justice system. I said we have to look for a new way. If you read my works on corruption, especially one that I wrote about on Corruption and the Judiciary in 1990, which is published and in the Dele Kasumu lecture that I spoke about, I was obliquely referring to Ricky Tarfa and allegations of trying to pay off a judge for the father’s funeral, among other instances. We have always had rumours of judges accused or guilty of acts of malfeasance. It’s not new, but I thought that the Nigerian state should be more ingenious in the way it carries on its investigation and should not bypass the NJC, which is the authorised organ to discipline judges. If you find evidence, you submit the evidence to the NJC. Once NJC acts on your evidence and it relieves them of their duties, then you can pounce on them. As judges, you can’t arraign them because they are still judges. They have no full immunity but a judge is immune from whatever judgement he hands down. It’s part of the convention and not in the constitution. It is when they are stripped of that judicial immunity that you can pounce on them. If you now find acts that compromise the independence of the judiciary, they should be punished. I’m not absolving judges.

Ok

But na the woman dey cry na.

President Muhammadu Buhari says his wife, Aisha, belongs in his kitchen and “the other room”, apparently a euphemism for the bedroom.

Buhari said this while speaking with journalists in Germany in response to an interview Aisha granted the BBC, where she said that his government had been hijacked.

In the interview, Aisha had also said that she might not support her husband under the present circumstances if he seeks re-election in 2019.

“I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room,” he joked.

“I claim superior knowledge over her and the rest of the opposition, because in the end I have succeeded. It is not easy to satisfy the whole Nigerian opposition parties or to participate in the government.”

Buhari is on a three-day visit to Germany.


https://www.thecable.ng/just-in-aisha-belongs-in-my-kitchen-and-bedroom-says-buhari

They have started again. Jumping up and down with no shame. Useles* people